Home Rental Startup playing at Startup Cricket League

Nobroker is a new home rental platform that makes it easier to find a new home without paying any brokerage. They use a verified process for listing to ensure that one finds their dream home by contacting the owners directly. In case if the customers cannot find a property they are looking for, they can post a requirement and NoBroker will send them an email notification with properties matching their requirements.

About NoBroker

NoBroker proudly claims that it is leading the paradigm change in real estate sector with its largest ‘Customer-to-Customer’ network connecting genuine owners and customers directly by creating an algorithm which identifies and eliminates brokers from the portal with the use of technology. They have so far successfully created the world’s largest online real estate ecosystem of more than 9 lakh genuine customers. This is a disruptive concept for the entire industry.

According to the founders, they are trying to set order in an unorganized sector. The biggest challenge for them initially was that no one believed that the real estate space could work without brokers. Globally, online real estate players are working along with brokers. Their main competitors are the entire pool of unorganized brokers. Every person in the country, who is looking for a house or has a home to rent-out or sell, is their customer.

The founders say this with great delight that they are solving two of the most significant customer pain-points in house hunting. First is the spurious listing by brokers on online websites which leads to huge inconvenience to customers and second is the high cost of transaction. From 3 founders, today they are a team of 180+ employees across tech, marketing and sales. They are currently operating in 4 cities- Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune & Chennai. According to them, they are witnessing 5 lakh customer connections on a monthly basis and helping their customers save more than 18 crores of Brokerage per month.

Ease of Use

To list a property on Nobroker.in all you have to do is just give them a missed call or leave a WhatsApp message. An executive will call you and help you list the property. It can’t get any simpler.

NoBroker.in gives smart recommendations to the customers based on real-time data and assists the customer in making an informed decision. Customizable rental agreements can also be made on NoBroker.in

Initial Thought and Breakthrough Moment

All the three founders wanted to start something of their own and were exploring multiple ideas. But right from the ideation stage it was very clear that the aim was to solve a customer pain point with their offering. That’s where the concept of starting a real estate portal without brokers came from.

Generally, the broker begins with showing the worst and non-moving flats, in the given rental range, which does not fit the requirement. This results in a complete waste of time and causes great inconvenience as one is unable to find a suitable house quickly. It was then decided to challenge this inefficiency. Their motto was to make looking for a house, a happy experience.

The idea of NoBroker was conceptualized in late 2013 and the website was launched in March 2014. It witnessed massive growth and high rate of acceptance and adoption from customers, due to a huge latent demand for non-brokerage marketplace.

In the words of the founders, “We have grown 20 times in the past 1 year across all key dimensions: website visitors, registered users and new property listings. We are getting 20 lakh visits on our site every month across desktop & mobile app. As on date, we witness 5 lakh unique customer connections every month. This leads to a saving of INR 18 crores in brokerage every month. “

The core team

at NoBroker comprises of:

Amit Kumar Agarwal (38 yrs) is the Co-Founder & CEO of NoBroker.in, looks after overall vision and direction of the company. Amit Agarwal is a graduate from IIT Kanpur and IIM Ahmedabad. Out of 13 years of his total work experience, he spent 8 years in management consulting division of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in their Banking and Financial services vertical.

He has wide experience in consulting wherein he consulted top Indian and foreign banks for formulating their business strategy (entry & portfolio strategy) and enhanced their on-ground profitability (through large-scale pan-India implementation, impacting hundreds of branches).

He has worked directly with CXOs, and won many accolades. This led him to head the strategy function in ANZ Bank reporting to India’s CEO. Here, he formulated India strategy and was instrumental in getting the bank, the very coveted two additional India branch licenses from RBI.

Akhil Gupta (34 yrs) is the Co-Founder & CTO of NoBroker.in, is a techie to the core and believes that a tech based platform like NoBroker can revolutionize house hunting experience for customers. Prior to founding NoBroker, Akhil has spent almost a decade developing and managing software development team at Oracle & stratup. His passion for technology and pursuit for solutions helped in filing couple of patents. Other than software development Akhil has experience in product design and rolling out products for global audience and has conducted trainings for sales team at Oracle.

Saurabh Garg is the Chief Mentor & Angel Investor of NoBroker.in

Having founded Four Fountains De-stress Spa, Saurabh comes with a huge experience of managing a start-up & accelerating the growth curve. In his role as a mentor at NoBroker.in, he guides the founders in all major decisions. At Four Fountains De-stress Spa, he heads the product division which has a wide range of health care and nutraceutical products. With his strategic guidance he established Four Fountains De-stress Spa as a leader in the fiercely competitive wellness category. He brings the same expertise to NoBroker.in. He has lead the innovative marketing initiatives for NoBroker.com and helped NoBroker foster strategic partnerships. Prior to his entrepreneurial stints, Saurabh was leading the sales and marketing initiatives at Hindustan Unilever Limited. Saurabh is analumnus from IIT-Bombay and IIM- Ahmedabad.

Amit (centre) & Akhil (left) with Saurabh Garg (Right)

FUNDING

NoBroker.com has raised Series B funding of $ 10 million in Feb 2016 led by BEENEXT & Digital Garage along with other investors namely BEENOS, Qualgro and Mr. Mamoru Taniya of Asuka holdings. Existing investor SAIF Partners has also participated in this round. NoBroker had raised Series-A funding of $ 3 million from SAIF Partners and Fulcrum Ventures in Feb 2015.

About the Startup cricket league and their Strategy

NoBroker believes that the Startup cricket league presents a great opportunity for all start-ups to come together and sweat it out in a healthy way. In their own words, “Our strategy on field will be the same as our corporate philosophy, ‘keep trying’, as they say, in the end we only regret the chances we didn’t take.”

NoBroker Team coming to SCL 2016

Future plans

The primary focus of NoBroker right now is on revenue and the four cities they serve (Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai & Pune). NoBroker firmly believes that it can break even in the next 18 months.

When they start seeing the 4 cities break even, they would expand to more cities in India and thereafter intend to take the product global given the strong presence of their investors in Southeast Asia and Japan. As a mid-term strategy, they are looking to expand their marketing presence both online and offline so as to carry out their plan of expanding to top 10 cities in India.

Startups generally celebrate every small reason, But if the reason is about a milestone achievement then it makes a big difference. This victorious path is not an easier one and we have faced and surpassed many challenges in the last few months to meet our target of half a million visitors. While our ambition is a much bigger number, the target we achieved was planned towards the end of the financial year and our team made it possible 4 months in advance.

Indeed a great effort by Shishir Kumar and the entire team and a special thanks to the avid readers of IndianCEO for following us. IndianCEO is indeed my first bet in to media business and believe me this is just the beginning. Early next year we have some great product announcements and our next milestone is not far away.